


Hinterlands

by fourteenlines



Category: Farscape
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-10-06
Updated: 2003-10-06
Packaged: 2017-10-04 12:39:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fourteenlines/pseuds/fourteenlines
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were no ghosts allowed in their home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hinterlands

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks muchly to cofax and Anna for their outstanding beta work on this piece. Also to Anna for issuing the "Unconventional Couples" challenge on Leviathan in the first place. This is my first completed story in over nine months that I've spent more than a day on. The last one was "A Whiter Shade." I can only hope this is a decent follow-up.
> 
> Spoilers through Bad Timing

The ground was hard and unyielding at first, but gradually, with much time and toil, it gave way. Produced fruit beyond their imaginings.

Perhaps it was the same way with each other.

D'Argo grunted and forced the plow deeper into Sykar's soil. It was cooler out here, away from the cities, and allowed Aeryn to survive. The planet was an unexpected boon to the allied resistance forces, a lucky and strategic conquest. The soil was rich but required constant work, especially out here in the backbeyond, where most of the fields were overgrown. His muscles tensed, his joints shifted, his spine curved, and he was rewarded.

Aeryn came behind, working their latest fertilizer into the newly-turned soil. It was her own formula, one she'd spent countless arns synthesizing and testing. It surprised her that she had such an aptitude for growing things, though once in a great while there was a disorienting moment when it seemed familiar as breathing. The sun burned hot and hazy, kissing her skin with redness.

It was nearly time for the tannot harvest, and in the meantime, they broke ground on this new field. Their tannot crops were finally producing enough that an indulgence wouldn't threaten their margin. This field would not yield tannot root. They would grow prowsa fruit, and D'Argo would make his wine. Their wishes had all been broken, and rearranged into a sort of piecemeal dream.

At the edge of the field, a girl of about six cycles played under the shade of ancient trees. She loved the soil as much as her mother did, and would return home with dirt staining her face and clothes, dusting her golden brown hair.

D'Argo caught Aeryn's eye, watching her daughter play, and he smiled. "We'll have to bathe her later."

She laughed softly, reaching out to brush grime from his neck. "We'll all have to bathe later."

His smile turned warmer, and a little shy, and he turned back to his work.

* * *

The mornings seemed to come earlier and earlier, though they had no device to measure time. It baffled Aeryn until one day she broke down and asked, and D'Argo explained that sunrise and sunset changed with the seasons.

Pre-dawn was a quiet time. Liv was the chief noise-maker in the house, but she was still curled warm and milky-soft in her bed, and wouldn't wake until full light. A few birds began to call to one another in the trees, a strange, longing sound that made Aeryn think of mourning.

Fog clung heavily to their fields before the sun rose. D'Argo carried the weight of loss on his shoulders, and spent mornings scanning the misty horizon, looking for those who had left them behind. Jothee's absence was as keen a loss as Lo'laan's death. He couldn't put these losses aside, couldn't come to terms with how he'd failed them. Aeryn and her daughter couldn't take away that sting.

Aeryn supposed he might be on the watch for Chiana, but she would likely come back to them dead rather than alive. She'd known exactly what kind of risk she was taking when she ran away to join her brother. D'Argo spoke of her proudly, but Aeryn knew he'd rather think of her in terms of regret. Lost chances.

Aeryn never watched the horizon. Her dead were with her still, every moment. They looked back at her from her daughter's face. Her mother mocked her maternal regard, and John poured out love and admiration. And if he ever did make the long journey up the path from the village, he wouldn't be returning from the dead. He would be real, and tangible, and deadly. It was much better to look forward, to keep marching ahead. If she looked behind she might stumble.

There were no ghosts allowed in their home. D'Argo had to keep his outside.

* * *

There were nine solid days of rain before the harvest began. They sat on the porch and watched it pour down, washing away nearly a quarter-cycle of hard work.

It would at least be easier to harvest the tannot root this way.

Aeryn stood at the edge of the porch and reached out to feel the rain pouring over her palm.

Sometimes they went for days, or even weekens, without touching each other except in passing. They'd settled here together, she thought, out of desperation and longing and loneliness. She didn't have words for this thing between them, but whatever it was, it was real. It was theirs. Still, it was a fragile arrangement. Sometimes, if he was tired and abstracted, he touched her like she belonged to someone else. And if she was equally worn down, she imagined he must be making love to a ghost.

Olivia's head was bent obediently over her lessons, but she kept glancing up at the rain rushing down around them. One small foot bounced impatiently while she worked, and Aeryn wondered if all children had this sort of energy, or if the girl had inherited John's manic streak.

Finally she shoved her books aside and a firm pout settled on her mouth. "Mother, _please?_"

Aeryn dried her hand on her pants. "Pick up your books and take them inside," she said calmly. Liv squealed and ran indoors. Children could have no concept of what a disaster like this meant. Aeryn pushed away the worry and the consequences for the moment. She stepped out from the shelter of the porch slowly, relishing the first trickles sliding through her hair, down her scalp, over the bridge of her nose and between her breasts. A shiver of suppressed longing raced up her spine. She stood in the downpour for several long moments before Liv came tearing back out of the house and down the steps, her messy hair instantly plastered to her head. Aeryn turned and caught D'Argo watching them from the window. She smiled at him as Liv caught up to her, grabbing her legs, shrieking with laughter.

Aeryn scooped up her daughter and turned on her heel, spinning faster and faster with stinging drops of rain flying into her face. "I'll race you to the stand of trees," she said as she let the girl squirm to the ground, and with a last look at D'Argo, dashed away from the house after Olivia.

* * *

She'd never learned to cook. Meals were simple, unless D'Argo prepared them. It reminded her, time and again, that he had been raised planetside, with a family and hard work and good friends. Aeryn was glad one of them had. Sometimes he'd walk into the common room to call them to eat, and find Aeryn staring at Olivia, completely at a loss as to how to deal with her. It was hardest when Liv would cry, because two instincts warred within her. She wanted both to strike her for being foolish, and to cradle her protectively in the curve of her body. D'Argo taught Aeryn to recognize which was the correct impulse at the time.

It was almost always the latter.

Love was a difficult concept for Aeryn. She knew it in many forms, but had always been undone by it. She'd tried it the other way -- John's way -- but in the end, life had taught her that love makes you weak. It took one small girl to teach Aeryn that love made her weak because she'd never learned the mastery of it.

It was more, she found, than speaking of it. Love was not in words, but in actions. That, at least, made sense. Olivia taught her this, too. A fragile pair of arms around her waist said more than a sleepy, half-mumbled, "I love you, Mother," ever could.

The girl had learned to speak of love from her father.

Aeryn found love in strange, small places, like the back of Liv's neck while she slept in her lap on long shuttle rides back from town. Like a dish of food D'Argo set before her, which he'd taken pleasure in simmering all day. Like a soft brush of skin on skin. And so she showed her love in these ways as well. Love was in her hands while she brushed her daughter's hair, while she worked tirelessly in the lab to ensure her family's prosperity, when she lavished D'Argo with pleasure and let him give it in return, sweet and careful into the dark night.

He was so alien to her, much more so than anyone she'd been with before. She'd overcome her prejudices long ago, and so it was strange but not foreign. But he knew her body, sometimes better than she knew it herself, and this should not have surprised her. His marriage was something they did not discuss, but she imagined it must have been powerful to keep them both holding on. She sometimes wondered if true intimacy was supposed to be like _this._ It was so much harder than needing someone until she could think of nothing else.

She learned more on the subject of intimacy here than John had ever taught her. They were lessons with a light touch. No one tried to force them on her, no one tried to convince her. It was a concept she had to approach on her own terms.

Love, after all, was a kind of muscle. Left underused, it was no surprise that it should ache. It would only strengthen if she exercised it in every way she knew.

* * *

The prowsa fruit wouldn't take that season. Aeryn knew this without having to check. There was not time to prepare the fields again before it came time to plant; the tannot harvest would begin in mere days, and by the time it was over, the slim window in which the fruit could be planted would have come and gone.

But she had thought there might still be hope for the vegetables and grains. Tannot root was harvested early in the season; vegetables were harvested late. They'd just begun to sprout and Aeryn had hoped, had so hoped, that they would be strong enough to survive the torrential rain.

They weren't.

The three of them wouldn't starve. The proceeds from their tannot crop would ensure that. But it ate away at their margin, set them back at least a cycle. She knelt in the soft, damp dirt and gently prodded at her ruined crops. The stalks were broken and the roots exposed, the topsoil washed away. She picked one bruised plant out of the mud and examined it. A few more days. Just a few more days and the stalks would have been strong enough, the roots would have gone deep enough, and they would not have lost this cycle's produce.

The lives of many people turned on far smaller periods of time. She shouldn't have been this surprised, or this stricken, at their luck. It was a pattern she knew well.

* * *

The hardest had been giving John's ring back to him. She remembered the moment he'd given it to her with a weird surreality. More than just her body had been fragmented that day, but that action seemed ultra-vivid, sharp and bright and nearly painful to look back on.

She supposed that was because she knew how it had turned out.

D'Argo had been married once before, as well. John laughingly called theirs a "divorce," his voice cruel and unbalanced. It was a word which carried sensible connotations. The dissolution of a marriage was not so unusual. Sometimes it was the only thing a person could possibly do.

Clutching Liv's head to her chest, the girl wailing and reaching for her daddy, Aeryn did the only thing she could. She shouldered a single bag and walked away.

Humans, she understood, called it "burning bridges." But this one was thoroughly charred, almost before she crossed it herself. A day or two before, she would never have considered this as an option. But the feeling of blood was still heavy on her skin, and she had no other choice.

The shock had been meeting D'Argo in the docking bay, preparing his ship for departure. His eyes on her, on her screaming child, were so full of understanding her heart had begun to beat faster. It had been so long since she'd had empathy from anyone.

"I can't live like this anymore."

He nodded. "Neither can I."

He was the one who suggested Sykar. If it weren't for him, they wouldn't have made it very far. In those first days Liv railed and screamed and threw tantrums so continuously it was a wonder she didn't wear herself out. If he hadn't been with her, Aeryn probably would have just opened an airlock in her desperation, and let the oxygen leak slowly muffle them both. It would have been weak and defeatist, but it would have been the most expedient solution at hand.

When they landed at Sykar, his hand brushed the small of her back as they left his ship. A frisson of something intense and frightening raced up her spine, but she didn't comment. Liv walked sleepily ahead of them, but D'Argo and Aeryn continued to walk side-by-side.

It was a half-cycle before they moved into the same shelter, and another before they became lovers. They were in no hurry, none at all.

* * *

D'Argo's fingers deftly probed the leaves on the prowsa starts they kept in her lab. It was even odds as to whether they would survive until they could be transplanted, the next growing season. Sykar, fortunately, had two growing seasons per cycle, otherwise there would be no chance of the very expensive clippings lasting that long.

They were part of a gift to one another. D'Argo bought the prowsa starts and Aeryn bought a new pulse pistol and neither of them said anything to the other about it.

And now his dream was close to wilting again. It terrified her, because she had no idea what would happen if it did. Would he leave? Would he ask her to leave? Neither seemed likely, but struggling on through this arrangement even less so.

She didn't want to leave Sykar. She was unbelievably, impossibly good at this. Without tannot root there was no cesium fuel, no chakan oil. No resources for the resistance forces. Still, this was something neither of them would have chosen freely.

Aeryn still had hazy memories of waking up from a poisoned sleep, her paraphoral nerve on its way to healing. She was worried about John and had no time to ponder the tenderness on D'Argo's face. She had forgotten about it until the first time his hand caressed her bare shoulder, until his tongue slipped between her breasts and down, down, down.

Aeryn shivered. D'Argo looked up at her and smiled, in the way that changed his whole face. "Are you cold?"

"No," she murmured, turning to check the chemical levels on a batch of loam. This venture seemed mildly ridiculous after her first experiment on Sykar, cycles ago now, but it normally succeeded nonetheless. "I'm not cold at all."

His hand was stretched out toward her shoulder when they heard Liv calling for them from the house.

D'Argo's smile turned rueful as he glanced down at the dirt covering Aeryn's hands. "I'll get her," he said, with such deep affection she couldn't watch him go.

She came in much later, after an exhaustive night's work setting up lamps in the lab to keep his plants alive, and found them curled up together in the common room, sleeping on the cushions.

She felt hot and cold all over, and had to go back outside. She slumped into the chair on the porch, and after long microts spent stargazing, fell deeply asleep.

* * *

When Aeryn Sun failed, everything tended to fall apart around her.

The blood had been hot and thick on her hands, and she had thoroughly enjoyed the feel of it. She'd been so sure. They'd been so sure. And of course she had been wrong. Of course.

There were other examples, as well. A microt sooner in talking her mother down, and Liv might have a grandmother to tell her stories. An utterly terrifying grandmother, but she'd have one nonetheless.

A dench braver, more bold, and she would be living a different life altogether, still in the Peacekeepers, sneaking into her lover's room at night and staying until just before the morning claxon. Instead, a man had died. Moya had become pregnant. Talyn had caused them such heartache, and then had died too soon.

She was justified in fearing for her brittle contentment now.

* * *

Aeryn woke the next morning with dew clinging to her skin and hair. It was just after sunrise, and the mist still hadn't burned out of the hollows. Everything was grey and slightly fantastic, and a heavy dread settled in the pit of her stomach when, just blinking the sleep out of her eyes, she thought she caught sight of John rising up out of the fog.

The ghosts here just kept getting more and more tenacious. But she would ignore them for as long as she could.

The dread dissipated as she came fully awake, and her stomach reminded her instead that she hadn't eaten the night before. There was still some bread and protein from their last trip to the market, and possibly a few pieces of dried fruit in one of the cupboards. D'Argo always made a hot mash for himself and Liv on mornings like this, but it was too heavy for Aeryn to digest.

Less than an arn later, the sun had risen fully in the sky and Liv was dressed for the day, playing in the yard with her hair still sleep-mussed. She played all sorts of games, mostly the kind where she talked to herself and laughed as though she were conversing with a real person.

The first time she'd done it, Aeryn's heart had seized with horror. D'Argo had gently explained that, when children talk to imaginary playmates, it wasn't the same as John talking to himself in a mad undertone.

D'Argo called her in for breakfast, and Aeryn sat down with her family while they ate.

Later that afternoon, when the heat of the day was at its peak, they sat at the same table quietly discussing their strategy for the next season, now that the food crops and the prowsa were ruined. Earlier they'd made their last preparations for the harvest; the crops needed to be watched carefully these last few days, to ensure the harvest began as soon as they were ready. The tops had been trimmed, weeds pulled, the equipment gone over one last time. Liv could be heard just outside the window, laughing to herself as always. It was such a comforting sound now; Aeryn could barely believe she'd been so daunted by it before.

It had been a worrisome day, but now it was somehow peaceful. A kind of peace which her life had been mostly lacking.

And it was rent, suddenly and painfully, by the sound of Liv shrieking outside.

They exchanged a microt's glance as D'Argo went for his qualta blade, and Aeryn ran straight outside, palming the pulse pistol off the table by the door on the way.

What she saw stopped her in her tracks. It was so completely unbelievable, and so dangerous, and how could she have let her guard down enough for this to happen?

John Crichton, dressed all in black and looking sinister and foreign, knelt in the soft soil of her yard, clutching Liv to his body like he would never let go.

D'Argo ran up behind her, and she felt rather than heard him curse under his breath.

They'd been waiting for this, after all. Waiting for John to come and take back his daughter. And by no means were they going to let him do it.

She sent a warning shot close by his left shoulder, but far enough away that there was no chance of harming Liv. John jumped, and Liv started and let out another shriek. Her previous outburst, Aeryn realized, had not been out of terror. Nevertheless, Aeryn and D'Argo both leveled their weapons squarely at John's chest.

"Step away from her," D'Argo ordered, and perhaps that was a mistake. Perhaps Aeryn should have been the one to give that order.

Because John, looking at them disbelievingly with his hands half-raised, suddenly grew wrathful. "Frell you, D'Argo," he spat. "She's _my_ goddamn daughter." And, faster than either of them could fire, he pulled a gun from somewhere behind his back and managed to look as if he was training it on both of them at once.

Liv, glancing around at her parents, burst into loud sobs. Fat tears rolled down her face.

And John, so hard and frightening and wrong, glanced down at her and faltered. So much that he sighed, dropped his weapon and went down on his knees again, gathering her to him and pressing kisses to her hair.

"Liv, honey, don't worry, don't worry, Mommy and Daddy won't hurt each other, I promise. I promise. We all promise, don't we?"

He looked at them significantly, accusingly, and Aeryn and D'Argo, exchanging another glance, reluctantly lowered their weapons.

"Olivia," Aeryn said coldly, "come here."

The girl shook her head, still buried in her father's shoulder.

"John, let her go." Her voice went even flatter, more even.

John held out his arms to show that he was not the one keeping Liv from leaving. Finally he picked her up, wiped her nose and moved cautiously closer.

"John," D'Argo acknowledged, closing the qualta blade and setting it just inside the door. Aeryn was not so quick to let her guard down. Never, in the thousands of scenarios she'd gone over in her head, had she even once thought that John would simply accept her leaving.

"You guys don't trust me. I get that," John said. "But that's too damn bad, because we can help each other. For old time's sake, okay? I think you know what I want."

Ice began to form around Aeryn's heart, and her hand twitched on her gun. If he tried to take Liv away from her, she would have no choice but to fire. She would not miss.

"What's that?" she asked.

John met her eyes, and she was surprised that they held no hatred.

"Tannot root."

So he hadn't come for Liv, after all. But that answer, considering his reputation, was almost worse.

* * *

John's name was whispered in the market stalls and at festivals and in private homes. No one ever spoke of his failures, but Aeryn could hear the real story between the lines. John was effective, but capable of great violence. That, at least, had not changed.

Their joint efforts to raise an intergalactic resistance had mostly succeeded. Peacekeepers, Nebari, the last vestiges of the Scarran empire -- everyone feared someone, and recognized that the next option was perhaps no better. Their work had momentum and carried on even after Aeryn had cut her ties. It raced on ahead of them, until John, working dangerously and alone, was but one of many leaders, albeit the most legendary.

Aeryn and D'Argo had encountered it before, the damage that John Crichton's name could do. Aeryn had adopted the Sebacean custom and called her daughter Olivia Sun. It was safer, even on Sykar.

It was not only the name of John Crichton that could do damage. The man himself was more than capable. Aeryn heard him variously blamed and praised for more acts than a single man could possibly be responsible for. And he _was_ just a single man, historical precedent to the contrary.

Aeryn and D'Argo were mainly absent from the legends passed around these days. However, a Nebari girl and her companions occasionally cropped up in the stories as allies of John Crichton. Most of what was said about John was unreliable, but that particular rumor was told often enough to be true. If Chiana still trusted him, perhaps they could too.

* * *

The quantity and price agreed upon, D'Argo had quietly excused himself to the lab, saying he had much work to do. As much as Aeryn wished she could be there instead of here, this arrangement was probably for the best.

Liv lay sleeping fitfully with her head on John's lap. His fingers idly combed through her hair, and Aeryn had to admit they looked like they belonged together. He looked much less dangerous that way.

The sun was getting low in the sky, and the golden light spilling over them made them look beautiful. John smiled down at Liv. "She sure is something."

Aeryn leaned against the porch rail. It didn't feel right to sit near him, as if nothing had changed. "Yes. She's...incredible. I'd never have believed it."

He looked up at her, and the smile faded.

She cleared her throat. "I'd thought you worked alone," she said.

He shook his head. "No. I know all the stories say that these days, but can you really see me pulling something off without ten people to pull my ass out of the fire?" He smiled ruefully, as if it didn't pain him at all. Aeryn knew otherwise.

"No," she said, laughing herself. "No. Still, twenty operatives? That's the size of a Peacekeeper company."

He grinned. "I know. I've got an ex-Peacekeeper running things with me."

She frowned. "Who?" No one she could think of would possibly work with John. No one still alive, at any rate, except for Scorpius, who was the least likely person in the universe to elicit that reaction from John. Perhaps it was someone she didn't know.

"Jena Chatto. The Disrupter who was going to assassinate the princess' brother."

Aeryn could feel the surprise evident on her face. "_She_ left the Peacekeepers?"

"I thought you would have heard. Almost half the Disrupters got tossed out for extensive contact with --"

"Unclassified species." They shared a small, private smile that somehow made things easier. "The Peacekeepers are falling apart," she surmised.

"And most of the former Disrupters are only too happy to help it along."

It was only then that the full implications of John working closely with Chatto hit her, like a kick in the gut. But that was so very unfair of her, to react this way when she shared her bed with D'Argo every night.

Aeryn nodded, just as Liv began to stir. John helped her sit up, and she rubbed her eyes. The poor girl's face was red and stained with tears, and Aeryn felt horrible that she'd scared her daughter so badly.

"Did you guys make up?" Liv asked.

John smiled softly. "Yeah. I think we did."

"Are we gonna go back and live on the spaceship?"

Aeryn stiffened, and John glanced at her before answering. "No. I think you and your mom are going to stay right here with D'Argo."

"That's right," Aeryn said quietly.

John frowned. "Olivia, why don't you go find D'Argo? I'm sure he could use some help in the lab."

Liv looked to Aeryn. "Mother?"

She nodded. "Go on, now."

They watched as Liv ran off out of hearing distance, and when Aeryn turned back, John's eyes were harder than they had been before.

"Why did you leave?" he asked sharply. "You never really said. Tell me that, at least."

There was a long pause as Aeryn struggled to articulate her reasons. She'd never put them into words before, and when she did, they felt strange in her mouth. "I didn't...I didn't like what I became when we were together." She sounded like an Earth woman, one of those she'd seen on television, and for the first time she understood what they meant.

"I couldn't see myself," she continued. "And that had never mattered before, but with Liv it did. I could only see you. I never knew what I did, when I was doing it for you. And I lived that life. The life we would have given our daughter. I wasn't about to... A child needs things that...we could not have provided."

He covered his face with his hands. "Aeryn, I couldn't see anything but _you._ You and Olivia. Everything I did... Why couldn't we make that work?"

"It...I don't think that's how things are supposed to be."

"We could have tried."

"We would have failed."

"God, _why?_ You're so sure we would have failed, but it just sounds like another excuse to me. Another excuse for you to leave."

She refused to let that sting, but it insinuated itself under her skin anyway. "John, we wanted it too much. We wanted it so much that we never gave a thought to what we were doing; whether it was right or just or beneficial. I refused to let my daughter grow up and realize how many people her parents had killed for her sake. In her name. I refuse to do that."

"Aeryn, we didn't..." But he broke off. A look of realization washed over his face. "This is about those Kalish."

She set her jaw. This was no time to cry, out of remorse or otherwise. "It was reprehensible," she said quietly, cursing the tears that sprang to her eyes. "It was a slaughter."

Thick blood, pouring over her hands like pitch, and such a feeling of joy, warmth spreading through her to know that this threat was eliminated. But there had been one moment, just before the last of them died, when she'd looked into his eyes, and it had all struck her as so very unreal. And she'd known in that moment that her intel had been wrong. She'd been duped; used to execute her own political allies. These were not spies. These were not out to secure her daughter as a pawn in a hostage game. These might have saved a people.

But no more. They were gone.

"I...know," he said after a moment. "I know." John sighed heavily. He stood and leaned against the porch rail, surveying their land. She saw, from the look in his eyes, that he'd long ago reached the same conclusion she had. "I never knew why until just now."

"I don't think about it. I can't. I did what I had to do to stop from doing it again."

"I think about it. A lot." He rubbed his eyes. "You're telling me that was because of you? I did that because of you?"

She flinched. "Didn't you?"

He stared into the gathering darkness for a long time, and never answered her.

* * *

Shortly after they began living together, D'Argo found her in the area of the lab set aside for a training room. The bag had come off its stand and she sank to the ground, clutching the pads they used when training Olivia, trying to detect the girl's lingering scent.

His hand was soft on her shoulder, and she covered her face and began to sob quietly. "I don't know why I thought I could do this."

"This?"

"Be a mother. Raise a child. I always get it wrong I don't know what I was thinking." D'Argo, she knew, must have found Liv locked in her room, where Aeryn had left her after misbehaving.

D'Argo kissed her softly, and it shocked her at first. He gathered her in his arms, and proceeded to tell her everything she'd ever done right.

"When I died..." Aeryn said after awhile.

He looked pained, and glanced away.

"When I died," she persisted, "you left me with your qualta blade."

He took a deep breath. "Yes."

And it answered her questions, even the ones she'd never asked.

Liv was asleep on her bed when they got back to the house, and Aeryn saw evidence that D'Argo had tucked her in soundly.

* * *

"I'll make the arrangements with a Sykaran by the name of Yenesi in Varua City. The transfer should be ready in three weekens." Aeryn held out to him a small data pad, which he took with gloved hands. "I've...subtracted a hundred credits from the amount, for the work you did today."

It was easier dealing with him when there was work to be done. They'd woke that morning to realize the tannot was ready for harvest, and John, without a word, had changed into work clothes and joined them in the fields.

"That isn't necessary."

"I insist. It's only fair."

"Thanks." He slipped it in his pocket. "Thanks," he repeated, so quietly she could barely hear. He seemed to recover when he said, "Another contact will pick it up. I'll pass it along"

"I understand."

"I'll make the transfer to your account in four installments, starting tomorrow. I hope it will be less suspicious."

Aeryn shrugged. "Everything that happens on Sykar is suspicious to someone." She glanced at the well-cared-for pulse gun sitting on the table nearby. "But we can take care of ourselves."

He smiled. "Yeah. You can."

He seemed to hesitate then, finally reaching into his pocket and pulling out a leather pouch. He handed it over, and Aeryn opened it curiously. "This is in addition to the transfer."

Currency. A thick stack of it, very valuable, in denominations from a dozen systems, all of which were accepted on Sykar. The sight of it made her sick.

"I can't take this. We don't need handouts from you. We don't need pity." Liv had mentioned the rains, and their lost crop. Aeryn wished she hadn't.  
"This isn't for you. It's for Liv." She paused, then nodded carefully, and after a moment folded the currency and put it in a locked drawer. He continued, "I don't want to be a deadbeat dad, even if I can't be here for her." The inference was clear. Nothing was ever perfectly safe, and someday they might have to run at a moment's notice.

It appeared he would look after them any way he could. "I'd never think that of you. Neither would Olivia."

"But I would." He flashed her a grin. It made her heart jump, but was still somehow sad and full of regret. She'd come to hate how he could do this to her; how she would always feel this pull towards him even when she knew it wasn't what she should want.

Love was confusing and volatile, and like other muscles, didn't always work the way it should. It could be strained, torn, broken. It could be pure agony when trying to use it again.

Sometimes it was never quite what it once was. That was a lesson she had learned a very long time ago.

John looked out at Liv and D'Argo playing in the yard, waiting for his departure. "I..." He swallowed, and Aeryn waited patiently. "I realize that this is a better life for her to grow up in. If I could leave..."

"But you can't," Aeryn said. "And you shouldn't."

He nodded, and they walked out the door.

Liv, to Aeryn's surprise, didn't ask to go with him as he hefted his bag and moved toward the fields. She clung to his coat, but softly, sadly, as if she understood the full weight of what was going on. "I love you, Daddy."

The look on John's face was enough to break Aeryn's heart. He loved his daughter more than Aeryn would ever be able to. "I love you too, sweetie." The low sunlight on her hair made it glow, and he buried his face there for a moment.

John straightened, and looked to D'Argo. He mustered a grin. "Well, D'Argo..."

"John. My friend."

"Yeah. Yeah, we are, D. Take care of my girls for me, will ya?"

D'Argo glanced at her, and the look told her everything she ever needed to know. He held out his hand to John, and they gripped each others' arms firmly. "I will, my friend. I will."

All that was left was this, the mad, destructive, needy tug at her heart. He didn't smile when he turned to her. "Aeryn..." His hand came up, briefly, as if he were reaching out to her, but he let it fall to his side.

It was for the best.

"Yes. Thank you."

He nodded, and walked away. Liv followed as far as the edge of their fields, and then she turned back, went inside quietly and watched from the window instead.

D'Argo and Aeryn stood on the porch, watching him go. They did not speak until he was nothing but a small black figure in the distance.

"Liv needs a father." His voice was raw and deeper even than usual.

"She has a father. Right here." She slipped her hand into his.

He seemed startled, or surprised. He turned back to the sight of John's retreating figure, though she could not tell if he was relieved or saddened. "I thought," he admitted, "perhaps you would leave with him."

She looked at John Crichton, moving ever closer to the horizon. It was not for the last time, but this still felt like some sort of ending. "Not everything is about John," she answered after a moment. They watched him walking away until he disappeared over the last ridge. He didn't ever look back.

D'Argo and Aeryn went inside, and the ghosts finally began to drift away.

*

 

end


End file.
